All About Deflowering

The Virginity Hit

“The Virginity Hit” takes a device — or a style, if you’re feeling generous — that’s become familiar in horror movies and applies it to the teenage sex comedy. The story, about the last of a quartet of high school buddies to lose his virginity (and thereby win the privilege of a ceremonial bong hit), is presented in the guise of amateur videos that are being posted on YouTube. When the on-screen high jinks are sufficiently embarrassing, the videos go viral.

Unfortunately, the things that can be funny and even lib- erating in a movie like “American Pie” end up looking coarse and slightly depressing in the scripted pseudoreality of “The Virginity Hit.” Scenes that need to be over the top — the blowup doll, the room of eavesdropping friends — remain earthbound, at least in the hands of the writer-direc- tors Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland and their anonymous young cast.

An unexpected thing hap- pens though: after Matt (Matt Bennett) botches the deflow- ering of his willing girlfriend, Nicole (Nicole Weaver), the movie takes a serious turn — Matt needs to learn a few les- sons before getting his second chance with Nicole — and suddenly starts to work. The cam- era settles down, the performances become more relaxed and believable, and several adult actors in supporting roles are given the time to make an impression, particu- larly John McLeaish as the creepy-funny proprietor of a New Orleans bed and breakfast.

Though “The Virginity Hit” counts Will Ferrell among its producers, it was originally made for $150,000. It’s interesting to note that even at that budget level, the women in the film are so much more attractive than the men that in real life they wouldn’t be caught dead in the same room with them, much less having sex.